OxyContin arrived in 1996 promising relief and carrying a lie about how addictive it really was. Journalist Beth Macy follows what happened next across the distressed towns of Central Appalachia and beyond, moving between the dealers who moved the drug, the doctors who prescribed it, and the company that pushed it. Through families, first responders, and people fighting to get clean, she traces more than two decades of an epidemic and the human cost left behind. Grounded in years of on-the-ground reporting, the book won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and became the basis for a 2021 Hulu miniseries starring Michael Keaton.